Kael woke to the sound of his own breathing, which was too steady, too controlled, as if his lungs were following a script rather than instinct. Never before in his life had his body operated with such ruthless efficiency. Lilian's procedure had changed him, yes, but the mana infusions saturating his inner organ gates were reshaping him even further.
Will any aspect of me remain once this transformation is over?
The thought came unbidden. He crushed it just as quickly. Weakness was the greatest crime in his eyes. He lived surrounded by chains, political, magical, and mortal chains, all waiting to constrict the moment he faltered.
Morning light leaked through the dormitory shutters, cutting pale lines across the room. Dust drifted inside the beams, swirling in perfect spirals.
Energy flows.
His mind supplied the label automatically. Even half-awake, the Compendium's precision mapped everything: the air currents, the drifting motes, the steady pulse of mana in the stones beneath his bed.
He sat up slowly.
The sheet slid from his torso, and cold air met skin that no longer felt fully like his. His veins hummed faintly beneath the surface, as if tracing patterns only he could see. Not glowing, thank the gods not glowing, but carrying that deep internal shimmer left behind by the inner gates' awakening.
A reminder.
He forced himself to stand.
The floorboards creaked underfoot. Not loud. Not soft. Just measured, another detail he shouldn't naturally notice. His movements were becoming unnervingly graceful, as though his body belonged to a dancer rather than a mage. Kael crossed to the cracked mirror hanging above the basin.
His reflection looked wrong.
Like staring through a thin sheath of ice. A person he should know, someone he should remember, but all he saw beneath the surface was hollow.
Then his focus settled onto his eyes.
A subtle change. Permanent. The infusion last night had altered them forever. One more price paid in the name of power.
His eyes caught the sunlight at a strange angle. Not brighter, not glowing, just sharp. As if the irises had been etched with a faint iridescent sheen of arcane mana. It was subtle enough that no one else would notice, hopefully.
But Kael saw it.
Because it hadn't been there before.
The hollowness beneath his ribs tightened, a pulse of absence that wasn't pain but something worse, like remembering a word that once belonged to you and finding only blank space.
He forced himself to shift focus.
He inhaled, activated the mana in his eyes, and his vision shifted immediately. Magic stirred around him in delicate responses. Motes of mana drifted like tiny constellations. He could see the power threading through his body, pouring from the five opened gates in steady, disciplined flows.
The clarity hit too sharply.
Kael gripped the basin until the sensation ebbed.
His jaw tightened.
He didn't look stronger. He didn't look monstrous.
He looked inhuman.
And that frightened him far more.
A gentle knock broke the stillness.
"Kael?" Dean's voice was muffled, uncertain. "You awake? Hurry up, we have Battle Weaving in a few minutes. You don't want to be late."
Kael didn't answer immediately. He let the eye infusion fade and watched his irises settle back into something resembling normal.
If they could still be called that.
He smoothed his expression, hiding even from himself the tremor beneath it.
"Yes," he said, voice level. "Coming."
He opened the door.
Dean stood there, smiling shyly, already dressed and prepared. James was beside him, equally ready. James looked between them, and Kael caught the flicker of calculation in his gaze. The boy seemed less confident than usual, almost diminished by their higher rankings.
Kael understood all of it instantly.
And felt nothing.
No warmth.
No irritation.
Just calculation.
The hollow pulse returned once, faint, almost thoughtful. Today, it whispered, something important will happen.
Kael stepped into the corridor.
The Battle Weaving Hall hummed with ambient mana, the way a forge hummed with heat before metal ever touched metal. The room looked like a magus testing chamber: walls reinforced, glyphs layered into the stone, faint spell-scars still clinging to the air. It doubled as the spell lab for first-years, a place where novices came to learn how not to set the building on fire.
It was something between a classroom and a battlefield, designed to teach mages how to weaponize mana instantly, shaping it into spikes, arcs, and piercing threads with runes and unstructured casting. Each station was a circular platform carved with resonant lines meant to absorb stray mana and prevent accidental explosions.
Students flowed in, whispering about instructors, rumours, and who might embarrass themselves first.
As Kael crossed the threshold, the air shifted. He felt the mana quality increase; a thin pulse of mana into his eyes made the difference obvious. The hall's mana floated like gas, wispy clouds filling most of the air, leaving only scattered pockets of emptiness. The sensation was tactile: mana brushed against him like static hunting for ground. His five gates hummed in response, slightly off the ambient rhythm. The Compendium's background conversion loop probably spiked; he felt the subtle tug of it doubling its throughput.
Two students moved toward Dean. They wore the same crest, a deep red Harcott device, on their lapels. A couple of nearby students, watching, mouthed the name so low only the nearest could hear.
"Those are Harcott's," one whispered. "Dean's cousins. Main branch. They never forgive being embarrassed."
"After the evaluations? They were told off by the elders. Dean beat them. They'll savage him for it."
The words slid past Kael. He noticed the glances but didn't take the meaning in. He saw the sneer aimed at Dean and the way Dean's hands curled inward, but the whisper of family names didn't settle in his head the way it did for the crowd.
The male Harcott stepped forward with a practiced contempt. "Bastard," he sneered. "Don't forget your place. Special mana or not, you're still lowborn filth."
Dean's face drained of color. He shrank, voice small. "I—I didn't do anything."
Kael recognized fear the way others recognize faces. He had been there. The sight tightened something inside him until the calculation snapped and the predator tilted the balance.
"Leave him alone," Kael said, voice even.
The Harcott's turned to him as if surprised anyone would answer. The boy, Kyle, some of the sidelines called him, flicked his ring. A fingernail-sized orb of condensed mana sprang into being and streaked at Kael.
It clipped his hand. A sharp sting lanced through bone and skin, as if someone had thrown a tiny, enchanted pebble.
Kyle smirked. "Warning shot. Next time, I break you."
Dean stepped forward, pleading. "Please, Kyle. I didn't—"
"Your existence is an affront," Kyle hissed. "You made us look weak in front of the elders."
Something in Kael broke. Fury pushed past analysis. He wrapped Earth Mana about his fist and swung.
A shimmering shield popped up. Kyle's bracelet flared, but Kael's strike hit the shield hard. Kyle staggered with shock; no one expected him to be struck back.
Kael watched the shield pattern as it wavered, detected thin seams in its weave, and struck those spots. On the third hit, the shield cracked and imploded like glass.
Kyle froze, truly afraid for the first time. The girl with him lunged, but Kael's finishing blow was already formed.
A hand closed on his wrist.
It was calm and immovable.
His momentum died instantly.
The woman who'd caught him looked like she'd never aged; her face was composed, her eyes old and unreadable.
"Everyone, settle down," she said. There was no shouting; there was no need. Her voice carried because it commanded obedience.
Kyle's shout choked out, too loud, too foolish. "I'll kill you, street—"
She turned her head slowly. "Did you not hear me?" she asked, voice perfectly level. "I dislike repeating myself."
The calm in her tone made the threat worse than any yell.
"No fighting in my class," she said. "Especially not brute brawling." She let her gaze sweep the students before returning to the pair. "Form rows."
Students scrambled into formation. Dean hovered close to Kael, shaken, ashamed, and relieved.
"Kael… I'm sorry… I—"
"Do not apologize. It was not your fault," Kael said, but his eyes flicked to Kyle. The boy avoided his gaze, trembling with a humiliated fury that promised something uglier later. Kael didn't hear the whispered Harcott commentary anymore. He only felt the low, constant pull of the Compendium and the steady drum of his own suppressed hunger.
The woman stepped forward. She was slender, the sort of beauty that forgot to age, but her gaze felt ancient. Her voice was soft and small yet carried the authority of stone.
"I am Magus Valia Cain," she announced. "I will instruct you in Battle Weaving. Do not fight with fists like an ape. A mage who has lost distance has already lost the battle. You must command what surrounds you."
She moved to the slate and drew seven runes by hand. Even raw-inked, they seemed to hum; Kael felt them like truths shaping air.
[Input received: 14 CP gained.]
Kael's chest tightened with a brief burst of triumphant disbelief: those seven runes had given him more CP than two hours of solitary reading. He had not expected that.
Valia's voice continued, crisp. "These are basic missile/spike forms. Fixed. No one except Archmages alters them lightly. Unstructured magic exists, but it takes decades of practice. You will learn, but don't make these runes crutches. In five days, you have a dungeon assessment; your survival depends on learning quickly."
A girl's hand went up. "Magus, who made these runes? How—?"
Valia lifted her palm. A shaft of ice formed in the shape of an arrow and hovered above her hand, perfect and cold. "Some can see the forms. Lucky few, whose aspects allow them to see mana itself, can perceive the runes in motion. We can see the ice. Those with sight can see the rune-shapes."
Kael's curiosity won. He infused his eyes.
Light blue mana swam above her palm. Tiny intricate shapes revolved in the ice, a lattice of runic geometry. He pushed more mana into his vision until a pattern fixated in his mind. The Compendium chimed.
[Input received: 2 CP gained.]
Compendium: Runes recorded: 8.
He was both stunned and elated. He whispered to the Compendium, half in private. "Have you recorded the rune?"
[Runes recorded: 8.]
Magus Valia's gaze slid toward him then, and for the first time he saw something like interest, a small, professional spark. "Mr. Voss, is it?"
He couldn't think. "Yes, Magus."
She walked to him in a slow, reverent stride. "You can see magic." It was not a question, but a statement. "Stay after class. We will speak."
She retreated to the front and, as she did, every head in the room turned to him. Curiosity and a thin streak of jealousy rippled through the rows. Kael's stomach kicked. He had been foolish to infuse his eyes in class; the thrill had overcome him. Now every gaze felt like heat.
Magus Valia cleared her throat, voice soft but cutting. "There are two ways to cast a rune: shape it externally, or shape it in your mindscape. External shaping is slower but safer; resonance rarely backfires. Mindscape shaping is fast, but failure is cruel: scars, mana injury, even soul damage. We'll begin externally; you must learn structure before you risk your mind."
She drew the first rune again in the air. "Observe, then attempt. You will not be able to see other people's mana," she warned, looking directly at Kael, "so do your best to form the rune."
She shaped the spell, then a spike of ice shot from her palm and struck the practice dummy with a sharp, crystalline crack.
"Now, row one, target the dummy and shape the rune," she instructed.
Students moved to their platforms and began channelling. The resonant lines beneath their feet glowed and hummed in response. Dean's hands trembled as he tried; his thread wobbled and snapped. James struggled. The hall filled with the faint sound of mana being coaxed and failing.
Kael should have felt satisfied that he'd been singled out, but the Compendium hummed insistently: data to be gathered, patterns to be logged. The hunger thrummed at the edge of awareness. He forced himself to stay composed, to watch and learn.
Instructor Valia walked between the rows, stopping at each platform. Her eyes flicked up to Kael once, then moved on. "Keep your hands steady. Rotation, not force. Mana is a flow, not a hammer."
Students kept the exercise for the next hour until a boy a row over finally stabilized his spike enough to score a clean hit. A small cheer broke out, tiny and relieved.
Kael could have cast the spell by now, but he was watching the Compendium as runes were shimmering in its pages, and he could see an interest awoke in the Compendium. Kael could feel an innate want from the Compendium to learn more. The ice arrow formed by Magus Valia had given the Compendium a route to discover more runes and in turn more CP for Kale to use.
[Permission to take over host mana.]
Reluctantly, Kael agreed to the request, and in his mindscape, different patterns started. But in the mindscape, the runes didn't form, so Kael's mana started converting into pure mana and converging above his hand forming different spikes. This pure mana was invisible to the naked eye unless someone was infusing mana in their eyes which seems was not a common thing. It began forming different spike shapes, and he did not know what the Compendium wanted here, but soon he got the answer as same runes with subtle differences in them started forming and being recorded in the Compendium.
The Compendium was using energy to form these spikes. The moment it gained energy, it used it again, but energy forming was a little greater than the energy used, so he was getting a net gain in CP. The Compendium was not just using his energy, it was purifying and returning it, a mechanical engine built for relentless self-improvement. He felt the minute, steady trickle of CP not as data, but as a burning relief, an antidote to the hollow emptiness in his chest. This was better than reading, faster than waiting: this was addiction. What fascinated him was how the Compendium would form a spell, record the rune, and then disperse it like a machine inputting a data stream.
After 200 plus iterations of the same spike, Kael's mana channels felt raw and his head pounded. The Compendium finally stopped and chimed.
[Efficient rune of basic spike spell has been achieved.]
Kael saw the runes floating in his mindscape as if part of it. He was afraid to cast the spell using the rune in the mindscape, but his curiosity won over, and he channeled earth mana into the rune formed in his mindscape. A spike formed above his hand, rotating like a drill. It was almost a solid form of earth, as if he could touch it. When he looked carefully, he could see that the spikes had sharp thorns all over their structure, and casting it felt like no chore at all, but his mana channels still felt raw after so much mana infusion. The Compendium had not created a typical mage-spike, it had crafted a weapon.
He sent the spike into the dummy, and when it struck, it left a hole in the dummy, and from that hole, it felt like a sharp thorn had impaled the dummy, the signature of a violent, efficient machine designed for rending and consuming.
Magus Valia came over and said in her soft voice that he casted that spell very fast. Her eyes became more interested in him. "Everyone must learn the dedication Mr. Voss is showing." Kael knew it was a lie. No amount of 'dedication' explained the speed or the perfect geometry of his spike. She was giving him a public shield while reserving her private judgment. Multiple students were able to cast the spell by now, so nobody thought Kael was something special. But he believed Magus Valia had some suspicions.
But Kael was happy for the first time, as he had gained a weapon, small as it may be, to fight back.
Then compendium chimed once more.
[Input received: 64 CP gained. Total 78 CP. Runes Recorded: 222]